Tigers' Torii Hunter Seeks Elusive Title

BOSTON - The next time a player says he has not even thought about his pending free agency, understand that he is lying. Or, at least, that he is not like the Detroit Tigers ' Torii Hunter, who enjoyed last season in Anaheim but knew he might not play there forever.

'You've always got to have a fallback plan, and when I was with the Angels, that whole season, I was just watching different teams, trying to put the pieces together,' Hunter said Friday at Fenway Park, where the Tigers and the Boston Red Sox opened the American League Championship Series on Saturday night.

'Do these guys need a right fielder? Do they need a 2-hole guy or a 5-hole guy? And I'd look at the pitching staff. If I didn't like facing those guys and I went 0 for 14, that's the team I wanted to play for - and I did that a lot with the Tigers last year.'

By the time the season ended, with the Angels missing the playoffs and Hunter missing the World Series for the 16th consecutive season, he had decided on Detroit. The Tigers had just been swept in the World Series by the San Francisco Giants, and they needed outfield help.

With a chance to negotiate with every team, Hunter and his agent, Larry Reynolds, sought only one.

'About eight other clubs wanted him, but we didn't want to put those clubs on hold,' Reynolds said. 'We were pretty straightforward. We said we were going to start with the first team on his wish list, and we weren't going to get into a bidding war. We signed before Thanksgiving.'

With a two-year deal for $26 million, Hunter had his next best chance to reach the World Series after six fruitless postseason trips with the Minnesota Twins and the Angels. The Tigers had a nine-time Gold Glove winner and one of the most popular players in the game.

'He's charismatic, he's funny, he's very approachable and he goes about things the right way,' starter Justin Verlander said of Hunter. 'What more can you ask for? He's the consummate teammate and friend.'

Jim Leyland called Hunter one of the toughest players he had ever managed, but he mainly praised Hunter for his performance. At 38, Hunter hit .304 with 17 homers and 84 runs batted in, helping the Tigers reach the A.L.C.S. for the third season in a row.

When they clinched an A.L.C.S. berth with a victory at Oakland on Thursday, Hunter gathered the team around the infield for a choreographed celebration called the Turn-Up. They raised their hands together, hollered some dirty words together, and laughed together.

'We were struggling in September, and Torii came up with it,' said the Tigers' utility man, Don Kelly. 'We'd do it before games in the clubhouse, just to get everybody pumped up, loosened up before the game. Torii leads it. Those are the little things that he does to bring everybody together.'

Hunter does his part, during the games and otherwise, but now he needs his teammates to help him achieve career fulfillment. Only one active position player, Miguel Tejada, has played more games than Hunter without a World Series appearance.

Hunter came up as the Twins' center fielder, roaming the same ground that Kirby Puckett had in a Hall of Fame career that included two championships. Puckett retired before Hunter's debut, in 1997, but he would come around sometimes and remind his protégé there was no feeling like the World Series.

At playoff time, Hunter said, 'he always had his arm around me, whispering in my ear, telling me, 'This is what it's going to feel like, so preserve your energy, don't get too pumped up because of the hype of the postseason, calm yourself down.' That's why I was always able to play well in the postseason, because he helped me out along the way.'

Hunter has a career .800 on-base plus slugging percentage in the postseason; in the regular season, it is .801. He hit poorly in his first A.L.C.S., for Minnesota in 2002, and well in his second, for the Angels in 2009.

Hunter said he still remembered the hopeless feeling in Game 2 of that series, on a raw, rainy night at Yankee Stadium, when Alex Rodriguez lashed a game-tying homer in the 11th inning. The Yankees went on to win in the 13th on an error, more than five hours after the first pitch. They took the series in six games.

Hunter's chance this year almost ended in the best-of-five division series. The Athletics led, two games to one, and took a 3-0 lead in Game 4 when Jed Lowrie's homer sailed just over Hunter's glove at the right-field wall.

The Tigers rallied to win the game and the series, and Hunter said he never lost faith.

'Fear, doubt and worry, that's what kills your dreams,' he said, adding: 'In life and in baseball, if you're not doing what you're supposed to do, that's because you feared it, you doubted it and you worried about it. So I don't worry, fear or doubt. I just go out and play and whatever the results are, that's what's meant to be.'

Hunter has been to a recent World Series, in 2010, as a pregame analyst for MLB Network for the games in Arlington, Tex., near his off-season home. The Rangers returned to the World Series the next year, but Hunter did not.

'I was depressed 'cause I couldn't play,' Hunter said. 'I said, 'I can't do this; I'm out.' '

Yet he still watched at least some of the games on television, he said, to sharpen his focus and remind himself why he still plays. It is not purely for money; he could have had more last winter if he had played teams against one other. It is for that elusive chance at glory.

'I see the guys jumping up and down after the game, and you look at it,' Hunter said. 'You've got to look at that dream and let it manifest in your mind and tell yourself you're going to get that one day.'

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